Broken Lines

by Jo Bannister

  Fortunately he was a fluent liar. Or rather, he was a successful liar because also he looked shifty when he had nothing to hide. ‘I was skulking,’ he said defensively. Neither of them would have difficulty believing that. ‘I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Never mind that. Roly Dickens knew about something that was only discussed in this office, and I want to know how.’

  Shapiro’s eyebrows rocketed. ‘Sergeant – are you accusing one of us of being in old Roly’s pocket?’

  That stopped him short. Donovan blinked and then knuckled his eyes. ‘’Course not. I just – I don’t know how it went wrong.’

  ‘Maybe it didn’t,’ Liz said reasonably. ‘Maybe he just didn’t take the bait.’

  Donovan shook his head. ‘You didn’t see Mikey. It was like a big joke. Him and the old man had been wetting themselves for two hours, and when they thought I was getting pissed-off enough to go home Mikey came out to share it with me. They knew, the whole thing, and I don’t know how if they didn’t hear it from someone in Queen’s Street.’

  Shapiro caught his angry gaze and held it. No facial gymnastics now, just the steady eyes of a man wanting to be quite sure that what he said was understood, ‘Donovan, you’re suggesting that someone in this building is passing information on an inquiry to a known criminal. That’s almost the gravest allegation you can make against a policeman. Do you mean it?’

  For a moment the superintendent’s tone was enough to silence Donovan. But reflecting on the facts didn’t alter them and he nodded. ‘Yes. The evidence is there. OK, everything we do doesn’t go according to plan. I might have misread the situation. We might have been wrong about who had the gun, where it was, what he’d do if he thought we’d found it. We could have set the whole, thing up only to find he’d gone to the pictures. Or there might be something we don’t know about that would change drastically how he’d react.

  ‘But it’s not just that he didn’t jump when we wanted him to. We said Jump and he blew us a raspberry. That’s not the thing going off half-cocked: it’s sabotage. Roly knew what we were expecting. He knew what we were doing and why. He knew that all he had to do was nothing, and then he was safe enough to let us in on the joke. He knew. Somebody told him.’

  ‘All right,’ said Shapiro slowly. ‘Anyone in particular you want to point the finger at?’

  Donovan was uncomfortable but he wasn’t going to back down. ‘The three of us knew, and Dick Morgan; and the Son of God, and the Station Sergeant.’ He was not a religious man: he didn’t mean that, just as no sparrow falls unmarked by heaven, so no operation organized at Queen’s Street escaped the celestial eye. For reasons now disappearing in the mists of time Superintendent Giles was commonly referred to as the Son of God. ‘That’s too many to keep a secret. One of us must have said something to someone – in the canteen, in the corridor, in the bog. Anyone in the station could have known.’

  ‘We’re not looking for someone who knew, though, are we?’ said Liz tersely. ‘We’re looking for someone who knew, and told Roly Dickens. For a favour or for money. So which of your colleagues do you reckon is in hock to the Dickenses?’

  ‘You’re making it sound like it couldn’t happen,’ Donovan growled, ‘and we all know it does happen. There’s nothing special about us, it could happen here too. I don’t know who. There’s nobody I had any doubts about until now. But if we ignore what’s happened it’ll happen again.’

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ asked Shapiro. His broad face remained expressionless. He’d helped Donovan with problems of every kind, professional and personal, in the eight years they’d worked together but he wasn’t going to help him with this. If Donovan thought one of his colleagues was an informer he was going to have to prove it. Until then he was on his own.

  Out on his own was a place Donovan knew, but that didn’t necessarily mean he liked it. People assumed he behaved like this from choice, deliberately taking positions where he could expect no support. He didn’t. He didn’t enjoy fighting all his battles single-handed, gaining ground a bloody inch at a time and always staring defeat in the face. But that puritan streak insisted that if a cause was right it remained so however few people espoused it, and right was worth fighting for however uphill the struggle. He often wished he could be more flexible, compromise without it feeling like drawing teeth. But he was a prisoner of his own myth, and by now he was so used to being the dissenting minority that he mistrusted anything that seemed too easy.

  ‘God damn it, I don’t know!’ But he wasn’t angry with Shapiro, or even himself, so much as a third party he had no way of identifying. ‘Roly Dickens is the only one who knows, and he’s not going to tell me even if I take a shovel to him.’ At the back of his mind he was aware that it might not have been a deliberate treachery so much as somebody saying something to his wife who then said something to her mother who was discussing it with her sister in the queue at Woolworth’s … That sort of thing happened more than bribery and corruption, and it was unstoppable because nobody ever realized they were the weak spot where the dam started to leak.

  ‘Which you wouldn’t dream of doing,’ Shapiro said pointedly; and after a moment, reluctantly, Donovan nodded.

  ‘’Course not, sir. Figure of speech.’

  ‘Besides which,’ murmured Liz, ‘you take a shovel to Roly Dickens and he’ll wrap it round your neck.’

  ‘OK,’ admitted Donovan, ‘I can’t prove it. But it’s happened, and it’s cost us time and effort and a couple of good convictions. Worse than that, it’s let Roly Dickens get up on his hind legs and crow about putting one over on us. About how his family are fireproof. We can’t let the idea get around that there are people in this town that the law doesn’t apply to.’

  ‘I know that, Sergeant,’ said Shapiro stiffly. ‘I may have said as much to you. I may also have mentioned that elephants aren’t the only ones with long memories. We’ll get them. We’ll get Mikey for the garage robbery, and we’ll get Roly for concealing the gun. I can’t promise it’ll be this week or next week, but it doesn’t have to be. We’ll be here for a while. And this investigation doesn’t founder because we haven’t got the gun. We’ll find someone who saw Mikey alone in the van. Mrs Taylor may be able to help when her head’s a bit straighter.’

  Liz nodded. ‘I’ll go and see her again after the weekend. She was still pretty upset when I talked to her before. She’ll have calmed down by now, she may have a clearer picture of what she saw.’

  ‘And if she hasn’t?’ asked Donovan, edgily.

  ‘Then we’ll look for someone else,’ said Shapiro. ‘It was early Sunday evening, there must have been other people on Cambridge Road. If we ask for eyewitnesses there’ll be someone who saw Mikey drive off alone. Or maybe I can poke a hole in his story. He’s waiting downstairs now.’

  Donovan was taken aback. ‘You’re going to charge him?’

  ‘Certainly not. The obliging little chap’s here voluntarily to help catch the wicked criminal who hijacked his van.’

  They didn’t have irony in Glencurran; even after so long Donovan could miss it if he was preoccupied. ‘But – he made that up.’

  Liz grinned and Shapiro closed his eyes for a second in despair. ‘Sergeant – go find some detecting to do. I’ll talk to Mikey. If I can make confetti of his alibi, you’ll be the first to know.’

  Donovan sniffed. ‘If I’m right about the leak, Roly Dickens’ll be the first to know.’

  After he’d gone Liz said, ‘Is he right, do you think – is someone here on more than a nodding acquaintance with the Dickenses?’

  Shapiro didn’t answer directly. One side of his lived-in face wrinkled up as if he’d sucked a lemon. ‘I think he’s right about last night – I think they knew what we were up to. Roly knew he had nothing to worry about. That might be because the gun was where it couldn’t be found, but we can’t discount the possibility that he heard it from someone here. I’d sooner think it was carelessness than corruption, but either way we
need to be aware of it. Next move we make stays in this room till it’s too late to matter.’

  He pushed his chair away from the desk and got up. ‘Well, young Dickens and his solicitor are waiting in Interview Room One, and since he’s here out of the simple goodness of his heart it would be discourteous of me to keep them any longer.’

  Chapter Nine

  His brush with death had made a better man of Mikey Dickens. Almost, Shapiro thought sourly, he seemed to be soliciting for some kind of Good Citizen award. Every question he asked, every time he sought a fuller explanation, Mikey’s brows knit in concentration and he answered as comprehensively as he could.

  Normally that would have pleased the detective: the more complex the lie, the sooner it breaks down. But Shapiro soon realized that although Mikey was saying a lot he was just repeating the same words, and Shapiro had heard them before. Mikey’s bladder, the man in the grey coat, the gun: it all sounded terribly familiar. Afraid for his life, Mikey had done what he was told. None of what happened was his fault. He never knew who his passenger was, wouldn’t recognize him if they met again.

  It wasn’t true. Shapiro knew it wasn’t true, but that wasn’t the point. It could be true, and without proof to the contrary Mikey was entitled to the benefit of the doubt. His solicitor was there to remind the superintendent should he chance to forget.

  Ms Holloway seemed surprised that Shapiro was still handling this personally. No one was dead, no one was badly injured: she’d expected that by now the matter would have been delegated to an inspector.

  ‘I like to keep my hand in, Miss Holloway,’ Shapiro explained affably – carefully pronouncing the vowel in her title for no better reason than that it seemed to annoy her. ‘New Year’s a good chance: it takes a couple of weeks for business to pick up again after the holiday.’

  She smiled thinly. ‘I suppose even criminals like to spend Christmas with the family.’ She said Christmas to annoy him in return: with a name like his he wasn’t likely to have been at Midnight Mass.

  Shapiro replied sunnily, ‘Don’t we all, Miss Holloway – don’t we all?’

  He moved on to the missing gun, the posse that rode out of The Jubilee in the early hours of Monday morning, and last night’s pantomime at the corner of Jubilee Terrace.

  Mikey affected total innocence. He wasn’t discharged from the hospital until Tuesday so events in The Jubilee prior to that were a closed book to him. He didn’t know what became of the gun: he assumed the robber took it with him. He went out to Donovan last night because he was afraid he must be getting cold, and after all, he did owe Mr Donovan his life. He had no other motive, didn’t even know what the superintendent was getting at. Honest.

  Shapiro gave a weary sigh. ‘If you’d just stop saying that, Mikey, people might be more inclined to believe you.’

  Mikey was puzzled. ‘What’s that, Mr Shapiro?’

  ‘Honest. It’s a dead give-away. It’s like saying, “You can trust me.” It wouldn’t occur to anyone who’s genuinely trustworthy that they had to say so.’

  But Mikey wasn’t saying anything more – anything different, rather – and Shapiro didn’t want to waste time that he could more profitably use when he had something concrete to put to him. He walked Mikey and his brief as far as the front office. ‘I may need to talk to Mr Dickens again. I don’t suppose’ – he nodded at Mikey’s limp – ‘he’s contemplating a skiing holiday in the near future?’

  A glint of humour sparked momentarily in Ms Holloway’s green eyes and she tossed the auburn rope of her hair over her shoulder. ‘If you can think of anything to ask my client that he hasn’t already answered, he will of course be available. To the best of my knowledge he doesn’t ski.’

  ‘No?’ Shapiro feigned surprise. ‘So he’d have no reason to own a ski mask?’

  ‘No indeed,’ agreed the solicitor blandly. ‘Which is why he doesn’t have one.’

  ‘Pity about the van catching fire, wasn’t it?’ said Shapiro. ‘But for that he’d have been able to prove his innocence. If his coat and gloves hadn’t been burned, the absence of blood and gun residues on them would have proved that he hadn’t handled a gun and hadn’t hit my sergeant in the face with it.’

  Ms Holloway was nodding. ‘Fortunately,’ she said calmly, ‘my client doesn’t have to prove anything.’

  They parted there. Shapiro watched them walk down the steps – Mikey’s limp becoming positively jaunty – with the composure of a man who’d seen a lot of suspects walk down those steps and had the satisfaction of bringing most of them in again through the back door.

  Donovan had been to the chemist. Absent-mindedly scratching with the end of his ballpoint he’d dislodged one of the plasters that was holding his face together, and the station First-Aid box hadn’t been replenished since the last punch-up in the cell-block. Mrs Sullivan the chemist’s wife fixed him up. Rosa Sullivan was from County Monaghan, Donovan’s mid-Ulster accent was the closest she got these days to the sound of home.

  Donovan was gingerly patting the little plaster into place when he turned at the foot of the steps and saw them at the top. Everything fell into place with a thump like breeze blocks. He didn’t have to work it out, he could see everything he needed to know. He knew now who’d passed information to Roly Dickens. He had.

  He’d never asked her second name. If he had he’d have recognized it from Mikey’s paperwork. But he’d missed her when she came in here on Tuesday, and a week before that she was still in London. The first time he saw her was on Tuesday night, riding out of The Jubilee on a motorcycle. She must have been seeing Mikey. Jade Holloway was his solicitor.

  Donovan froze with one foot on the bottom step, his heart turning to ice. The blood drained from his face and his eyes went fathomless. He said nothing. He waited.

  A moment later Jade saw Donovan. She wasn’t surprised to see him here, though in a perfect world she’d have timed the revelation better. She drew a quick breath then turned to the young man beside her. ‘Mikey, can you make your own way home? I’ll talk to you later.’

  Mikey nodded. He managed the steps without too much difficulty, but he couldn’t manage to pass Donovan without rubbing it in. ‘Have you met my brief, Mr Donovan? Fresh up from London – she’s been in the Old Bailey and everywhere. Fairly spoils you for old Mr Carfax, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Mikey,’ said Jade, a touch sharply. ‘I’ll see you later, all right?’

  With a sly little grin he went to leave. But as he drew level Donovan’s arm shot out to block his passage. His face was dark with fury and his voice was thick. ‘Enjoy it, Mikey. There aren’t that many laughs where you’re going, this might be the last one you get.’

  Mikey contrived to look offended. ‘You still think it was me that hit you, don’t you? I’m hurt, Mr Donovan, I really am. I explained to Mr Shapiro what happened. I don’t know what else I can do.’

  Donovan held him with terrible eyes. ‘You can go to hell, Mikey, and take your fancy London lawyer with you. I should have left you in the van. I should have let you burn.’

  For a split second, before he remembered to do the cocky grin, Mikey looked genuinely shocked. To him this was a game he played with the police. If he lost he’d do his time without much rancour. Along with shimming locks and hot-wiring cars, Roly had taught him to pay for his mistakes. He still hoped to persuade a court that Donovan was mistaken and he too was a victim of the armed robber; but if, inexplicably, they preferred Donovan’s version he wouldn’t be bitter. He couldn’t see why Donovan was turning this into a grudge match.

  He gave a little frown. ‘Mr Donovan, don’t the words “No hard feelings” have any meaning for you?’ He passed the policeman at a safe distance and limped up Queen’s Street into town.

  They were left alone, Jade at the top of the steps, Donovan at the bottom. She began, ‘It isn’t how you think—’

  A snort of derision interrupted her. ‘It’s exactly how I think!’

  She came down a step towards him. �
��I didn’t set out to deceive you. You put me in a difficult position. You were trying to entrap my clients. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t heard.’

  ‘You lied to me!’

  ‘I didn’t lie,’ retorted Jade, ‘I just didn’t tell you I was involved. I didn’t ask you to talk about your work; but if I’d stopped you I’d have denied my clients some useful information. They’re the ones I owe a duty to.’

  ‘And the men in the kitchen? That wasn’t a lie?’

  She risked a tiny smile. ‘Well, maybe a little one. You backed me into a corner, I had to say something – it was all I could think of at short notice.’

  ‘You made a fool of me! You invented a story to send me off on a wild goose chase, and you let the Dickenses know so they could enjoy it too.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Donovan, I couldn’t resist it – you were trying to pull a fast one, I couldn’t resist turning the tables on you. All right, that was mean. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing: I was annoyed, I felt you were trying to pressurize me. Later I wished I hadn’t done it, but I could only have warned you by identifying myself and I wasn’t ready to do that.’

  ‘You could at least have kept quiet about it. I’d still have wasted my evening, but at least I wouldn’t have had Mikey laughing in my face!’

  Jade gave an elegant little shrug. She still seemed to think it was funny, was surprised he hadn’t seen the joke by now. ‘I thought I’d better, I knew you weren’t going to do any harm watching half the night for someone who wasn’t going anywhere. But there are some hot-heads in The Jubilee, so I’m told, I didn’t want one of them thumping you.’

  ‘You set me up!’

  ‘I didn’t set you up.’ The corner of her mouth twitched. ‘I just let you set yourself up. Donovan, if you’re going to play games with people you mustn’t be surprised if they try to win.’